Tonight I was definitely in the mood for pasta. It turned out to be slightly cross-cultural. I used a Japanese eggplant, southern Italian vegetables and pasta, and Greek Mzithra cheese. It’s essentially a riff on a Calabrian pasta dish with eggplant and zucchini and ricotta salata. However, the large eggplant I had in the refrigerator had seen better days, so I had to resort to the long, thin Asian kind, a perfectly good substitute. I rarely buy ricotta salata (too salty for my wife, of course — not to mention made from cow’s milk). However, this dish calls for a little salty sharpness to counterpoint the sweetness of the vegetables and tomato sauce, and I had a small amount of Mzithra, a Greek sheep’s milk cheese which Hank had introduced me to a few years ago. The signature dish for that cheese is Spaghetti and Mzithra in a Brown Butter Sauce. Superb, but beyond the Pale for mostly-vegans. One final note: I decided a side of vegetables would be salubrious, so I boiled some fresh kale from the farmer’s market yesterday, and served it with just olive oil and salt.

cut eggplant into 3/4″ chunks

cut zucchini into 3/4″ pieces

salt zucchini for 1/2 hour, drain and wipe dry

sauté eggplant and a little garlic in olive oil until lightly browned; remove to a bowl

in same pan, sauté zucchini until lightly browned

add eggplant back to pan with zucchini, add salt and pepper, and sauté until almost tender